[racket] problems with the term 'symbol'

On Oct 13, 2014, at 11:53 AM, Christian Wagenknecht <c.wagenknecht at hszg.de> wrote:

> With regard of Racket's symbols I have a problem with the consistency of the terminology as follows.
> A symbol in Scheme and maybe in earlier Racket versions is considered as an identifier. For example xyz is a symbol, whereas 'xyz avoids the evaluation of xyz.
> 
> In current version the little ' (normally as shorthand for quote) belongs to the symbol. For example 'xyz is a symbol. A symbol is obviously considered as a quoted identifier, at least syntactically.
> 
> However, when using a symbol as part of an expression the prepending ' disappears. For example: (vector 1 'xyz), consisting of a number and a symbol evaluates to '#(1 xyz). But xyz is not a symbol but an identifier. Therefore to say that this vector belongs of a number and a symbol is no longer valid. (vector-ref '#(1 xyz) 1) returns 'xyz, which is correct, however, this is also visually a difference where there is none.
> 
> Could you help me to get it right, please?


You need to distinguish to what an evaluation evaluates (a value) and how the value prints. These are separate concerns and the Lisp/Scheme community suffered from a conflation for decades; Brian Smith's treatise on 2Lisp and 3Lisp was the worst form of this suffering. 

-- Matthias